Easter Gift Ideas – Animal and Insect Kits

Easter Basket Gifts – Science and Nature Toys

Mar 1, 2009 Renee Carver

Easter gift ideas for kids who like to study backyard wildlife include educational nature and science toys such as animal kits and insect kits, garden decor like feeders

For parents tired of giving the same stuffed chicks and candy as Easter gifts every year, try selecting quality educational toys that are geared toward kids' interests. For example, give children who like collecting, raising, and observing backyard animals and insects nature and science toys that will encourage scientific learning and discovery, such as animal kits and bug kits.

After all, spring is an excellent time for collecting bug specimens and raising insects from eggs or larvae, so fill children's Easter baskets with all the supplies, nature toys, and nature kits a young scientist will need to start studying backyard wildlife.

Easter Gift Ideas – Insect Collecting Supplies and Entomology Equipment

Every young scientist needs proper tools of the trade, so parents might fill a child's Easter basket with bug collecting equipment. Young bug hunters can use bug vacuums, live insect catch-and-release trappers, butterfly nets, moth nets, or general insect nets for capturing specimens safely.

To house the captured bugs, kids can use a bug jar, insect house, or bug house kit. If children want to set up an elaborate habitat, they can use Bug Podz clear tubes and domes to create a whole system in which captured insects can live. To observe the captured insects, children can use a simple magnifying glass or a magnifying box.

Ideas for Easter Basket Stuffers – Live Insect Kits and Animal Kits

Children interested in studying animals and insects can use animal habitat toys to raise wildlife from eggs and larvae. Parents can give such children nature kits for raising live animals like a painted lady butterfly from a caterpillar, a frog from a tadpole, ladybugs from larvae, or a praying mantis from an egg. Other kits include ones for raising fiddler crabs, beetles, silkworms, and earthworms. Kids interested in animals of the past can even raise Triassic Triops, or prehistoric sea creatures that are like shrimp.

Adult animals and insects may also be bought and kept as pets and for observation. Curious young entomologists will like bug kits for studying roly-poly pillbugs, hissing cockroaches, ants, and millipedes.

Easter Basket Gifts – Animal Houses and Feeders

To attract wildlife to a backyard for study, children may need to provide wild animals with homes and food. Give children animal homes such as a ladybug house, a butterfly house, or a bird house, and food sources for animals such as bird feeders and butterfly feeders. For children interested in studying arachnids, the Garden Spider Web Frame ($11.99) is a wooden frame on a stake that can be set up in a garden to create the perfect place for a spider to spin a web.

Ideas for Easter Basket Stuffers – Insect Guides and Books About Wildlife

Children studying insects will like to read books about bug hunting such as the classic Pets in a Jar: Collecting and Caring for Small Wild Animals by Seymour Simon [Puffin, 1979]. Also useful will be guides for learning about and identifying bugs, such as The Best Book of Bugs by Claire Llewellyn [Kingfisher, 2005] or Simon & Schuster Children's Guide to Insects and Spiders by Jinny Johnson [Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, 1997].

Depending on the area in which a family lives, parents can provide children with field guides to bigger local fauna that are likely to appear in the family backyard.

Kids interested in nature and studying local wildlife will learn from and enjoy any of the educational toys suggested above. As a finishing touch to children's Easter baskets, parents can add a few pieces of bug candy, or insect-themed sweet treats such as chocolate dipped insects, edible insect candy with real insects embedded inside the candy, and gummy bugs.

Parents can also check out Easter gift ideas for kids interested in gardening.

The copyright of the article Easter Gift Ideas – Animal and Insect Kits in Kids Products is owned by Renee Carver. Permission to republish Easter Gift Ideas – Animal and Insect Kits in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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